(no subject)

[loopychew]

karenhealey hit me with the one-two punch of link to this post regarding the casting of white kids as at least three of the four heroes in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the most recent casting of the Fire Nation players.

Anyone who hasn't seen this show ought to give it a chance. For all of the superficial facets pointing to it being your traditional Saturday-morning cartoon, it's incredibly smart, with genuine character-based humor and development, well-animated action sequences, smart plotting, excellent acting (they actually cast kids for the main characters), and a fully-realized world. They specifically plotted this show out for three seasons, and they know how they were going to spend every single half-hour episode. Small details that are mentioned offhand may show up in more significant capacity further down the line, and there are numerous scenes that are out-and-out gorgeous to watch. spectralbovine does an incredible job summarizing the awesome that is this show, and it pains me to realize that so many people on my flist (and a few of the people I know in RL) have worn their love of this show on their sleeves and I didn't stop to think about it until mid-last year.

Now, like I said, the "fully-realized world" was an incredibly important part of the atmosphere in Avatar. It pretty much lives and breathes, and you can see how much work was put into creating it. Each of the different cultures takes its element from a different culture: The Water Tribe is very heavily Inuit-influenced (note their manner of dress and the color of their skin, as well as their villages), the Air Nomads (more or less extinct as of the beginning of the show, hence the sub-title "The Last Airbender") more or less based on Tibetans (their mode of dress), and the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation based on different eras of Chinese rule. The inhabitants of this world are more or less Asian.

For the movie, we currently have:

Main characters from "Hero" races (Two from the Water Tribe and an Air Nomad thus far): White.
Characters from "Villain" race: Iranian, Indian (two thus far), Maori.

I think the best word to summarize all this is "blargh." While I like all the actual actors playing the characters (at least, the Fire Nation characters--I don't really know any of the main characters), I just want to spend my time banging my head against the wall hearing about the casting choices and its basic implications.

Y'know what, though? I don't have to watch this film. I don't know how they're planning on distilling something like Avatar into a couple of hours, anyway, even if it's apparently planned to be a trilogy. I do highly recommend checking out the TV series when you can, though.

Comments

[shachihoko.livejournal.com]

I should appreciate a chance to bap the casting director for The Last Airbender over the head for this. I realize that they're trying to get actors and actresses who fit the approximate age range and can actually act in English, but ... still. That just tells me that maybe it's not worth the effort. -.-;

I find it rather ironic that I'm more prepared to handwave the same kind of ethnic casting drift in Dragonball Evolution which is based on actual anime ... but seriously, isn't the anime cast a hodgepodge of distinctly Asian + aliens who happen to look more or less human + more aliens (and other creatures) who look a lot less human + humans who could be from more or less anywhere in the whole damn world? With that in mind, I'm prepared for Roshi and Chichi to be the most identifiably Asian characters, take a green-skinned James Marsters as Piccolo, and let the chips fall where they may as far as casting ethnicity goes for characters like Bulma.

[damienroc.livejournal.com]

While it's not perfect, I'm rather impressed by the Asian-ness for Dragonball. Sure, they could have got someone Asian to play Goku, but apart from that, they're doing pretty well. Add in the behind-the-scenes support with James Wong and Stephen Chow, and and they're doing pretty well.

Of course, that's not saying anything about the quality of the film, mind.

[baagaa.livejournal.com]

Ugh, that's very disappointing, but I can't say I'm surprised. The same has happened with other recent films. -_-;